What storage do you use for VDI?

[julianwood]

We currently use ESX 3.5 in multiple locations globally mostly all backended on NetApp Filer along with the rest of our enterprise data which has proved to be a winning combination although at cost.

We need to head down the VDI route to host 600 desktops in a new site and although would love to use NetApp, the costs don't stack up for hosting desktops. We feel we don't need to store desktops on our expensive Tier 1 storage.

What products / vendors are you using for VDI? Options we've been looking at are Infortrend's EONStore, Overland, Isilon, Bluearc.

What else should we be looking at and what experience does anyone have of these cheaper 'made for VDI' solutions.

[admin]

I've seen everything at the customer sites .....

NFS

FC SAN

iSCSI

NetApp Filers with Cache cards etc ...

Everyone has it's own opinion in the storage area ...

Also seen local storage but this case does not use all of the virtualization ebnefits like vMotion etc...

Chris

Blog:

http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/dommermuth | http://www.thatsmyview.net/

[julianwood]

Is anyone using InforTrend EonStore for VDI Storage?

We've spotted the S12E R1132 which is a redundent head with disks and seems like a good price but would like to hear from anone with expeience of using the product?

[azn2kew]

We've use NFS/VIew 3.0 and it works great along with Linked Clone and Composer features and if possible get the one with Cached cards for better boot or simultaneous access with 100+ VDI clients at once that would be great. Imagine every morning about 200+ clients launch the resource desktop pools, that would hit hard on your storage performance. You can check out more View 3.0/NFS paper on netapp.com and vmware.com. Never heard of that new storage mentioned below so no quote on it. If you can afford FC, that would be better but NFS is a great solution for VDI in my point especially using NetApp filers.

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Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[nonsparker]

We use a Hitachi USP-VM and it is very fast. The management UI sucks but the SAN is rock solid.

[patricko]

We are using a EVA 8000 with HP DL585. SAN was chosen for its easy management.

Blog:

[SunnyC]

You might want to look at this thread here.

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/78858?tstart=1095

Let me know if you have any questions.

[AndreTheGiant]

If you will use View Composer (I suppose yes due the large numeber of VM), I suggest (IMHO) to choose a storage with a good amount of cache.

In this way the "master image" will have a lot of hit and can be stored in the cache giving good overall performance.

Andre

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